Overview

The Cupcake Club gets its start in this first book of a sweet treat of a series!

Katie Brown is miserable when her best friend is invited to join the Popular Girls Club and Katie is left out. Is there an Unpopular Girls Club she can join? Fortunately, Katie finds her way with a great new group of friends—Mia, Emma, and Alexis—and together they form the Cupcake Club. Sometimes starting from scratch turns out to be the icing on the cupcake!

More About
This Book

Overview

The Cupcake Club gets its start in this first book of a sweet treat of a series!

Katie Brown is miserable when her best friend is invited to join the Popular Girls Club and Katie is left out. Is there an Unpopular Girls Club she can join? Fortunately, Katie finds her way with a great new group of friends—Mia, Emma, and Alexis—and together they form the Cupcake Club. Sometimes starting from scratch turns out to be the icing on the cupcake!

Editorial Reviews

Publishers Weekly

This debut installment of the Cupcakes Diaries covers familiar turf. On the first day of middle school, Katie's best friend Callie snubs her for the "Popular Girls Club." Hurt but resilient, Katie bonds with stylish Mia, who has just moved to town from Manhattan; shy Emma; and down-to-earth Alexis. When Katie's overprotective, "cupcake crazy" mother (who, yes, calls her "Cupcake") senses that her daughter has had a rough day she proposes a "cupcake cure" and the two bake a batch, which Katie shares with her new pals. Katie, an affable narrator, asserts that middle school "got a little bit easier" after she and her friends form the Cupcake Club and bake together on weekends. At a school fundraiser, Katie and crew sell cupcakes (competing with Callie and her cronies, who hawk disastrous makeovers), and win the prize. "It was like the sweet icing on top of a delicious cupcake," gushes Katie, whose reconciliation with Callie caps this breezy, predictable middle-grade story. Mia in the Mix pubs simultaneously. Ages 8–12. (May)

Children's Literature
- Claudia Mills

Katie's first day of middle school turns out to be horrible: she is defeated by her combination lock, busted for texting during homeroom, and assigned extra math problems for being late to class. Worst of all, far worse than anything, her best friend, Callie, seems to have abandoned her for membership in "the Popular Girls Club." Luckily, Katie's dentist mom prescribes "the cupcake cure," and the yummy bunch of pineapple "upside-down" cupcakes that they bake together becomes the impetus for Katie's own new club, with her own new friends, the Cupcake Club. Which of the two clubs will win the school fundraising contest? And can Katie and Callie ever be friends again? Simon has an appealing light touch for portraying middle-school angst. While Katie faces plenty of age-appropriate slights and humiliations, the "mean girls" who snub her are not made out to be outrageously evil, just fellow adolescents drawn into hard-to-escape clique cattiness. Former best friend Callie's own dilemma, in figuring out how to keep her old friend while moving on to new friends, is believable and poignant. And the cupcakes—recipes included—sound absolutely delicious. Further books featuring other members of the Cupcake Club are promised and should prove equally easy to digest and equally tasty. Part of the "Cupcake Diaries" series. Reviewer: Claudia Mills, Ph.D.

Related Subjects

Meet the Author

Coco Simon always dreamed of opening a cupcake bakery, but she was afraid she would eat all the profits. When she’s not daydreaming about cupcakes, Coco edits children’s books and has written close to 100 books for children, tweens, and young adults, which is a lot less than the number of cupcakes she’s eaten. Cupcake Diaries is the first time Coco has mixed her love of cupcakes with writing.

Read an Excerpt

CHAPTER 1

Who’s Afraid of Middle School? Not Me!

Every time I have ever watched a movie about middle school, the main character is always freaking out before the first day of school. You know what I mean, right? If the movie’s about a guy, he’s always worried about getting stuffed into a garbage can by jocks. If it’s about a girl, she’s trying on a zillion outfits and screaming when she sees a pimple on her face. And no matter what movie it is, the main character is always obsessed with being popular.

My name is Katie Brown, and whenever I watched those movies, I just didn’t get it. I mean, how could middle school be that different from elementary school? Yeah, I knew there would be new kids from other schools, but I figured everyone from our school would stick together. We’ve all pretty much known one another since kindergarten. Sure, not everybody hangs out together, but it’s not like we put some kids on a pedestal and worship them or anything. We’re all the same. Back in third grade, we all got sick together on mystery meat loaf day. That kind of experience has to bind you for life, doesn’t it?

That’s what I thought, anyway. I didn’t spend one single second of the summer worrying about middle school. I got a really bad sunburn at the town pool, made a thousand friendship bracelets at day camp, and learned from my mom how to make a cake that looks like an American flag. I didn’t stress out about middle school at all.

Guess what? I was wrong! But you probably knew that already. Yeah, the cruel hammer of reality hit pretty hard on the very first day of school. And the worst thing was, I wasn’t even expecting it.

The morning started out normal. I put on the tie-dyed T-shirt I made at day camp, my favorite pair of jeans, and a new pair of white sneakers. Then I slipped about ten friendship bracelets on each arm, which I thought looked pretty cool. I brushed my hair, which takes about thirty seconds. My hair is brown and wavy—Mom calls it au naturel. I only worry about my hair when it starts to hang in my eyes, and then I cut it.

When I went downstairs for breakfast, Mom was waiting for me in the kitchen.

“Happy first day of middle school, Katie!” she shouted.

Did I mention that my mom is supercorny? I think it’s because she’s a dentist. I read a survey once that said that people are afraid of dentists more than anything else, even zombies and funeral directors. (Which is totally not fair, because without dentists everybody would have rotten teeth, and without teeth you can’t eat corn on the cob, which is delicious.) But anyway, I think she tries to smile all the time and make jokes so that people will like her more. Not that she’s fake—she’s honestly pretty nice, for a mom.

“I made you a special breakfast,” Mom told me. “A banana pancake shaped like a school bus!”

The pancake sat on a big white plate. Mom had used banana slices for wheels and square pieces of cantaloupe for the windows. This might seem like a strange breakfast to you, but my mom does stuff like this all the time. She wanted to go to cooking school when she got out of high school, but her parents wanted her to be a dentist, like them. Which is unfair, except that if she didn’t go to dental school, she wouldn’t have met my dad, and I would never have been born, so I guess I can’t complain.

But anyway, in her free time she does the whole Martha Stewart thing. Not that she looks like Martha Stewart. She has brown hair like me, but hers is curly, and her favorite wardrobe items are her blue dentist coat and her apron that says #1 CHEF on the front. This morning she was wearing both.

“Thanks, Mom,” I said. I didn’t say anything about being too old for a pancake shaped like a school bus. It would have hurt her feelings. Besides, it was delicious.

She sat down in the seat next to me and sipped her coffee. “Do you have the map I printed out for you with the new bus stop location?” she asked me. She was doing that biting-her-bottom-lip thing she does when she’s worried about me, which is most of the time.

“I got it, but I don’t need it,” I replied. “It’s only four blocks away.”

Mom frowned. “Okay. But I e-mailed the map to Barbara just in case.”

Barbara is my mom’s best friend—and she’s also the mom of my own best friend, Callie. We’ve known each other since we were babies. Callie is two months older than I am, and she never lets me forget it.

“I hope Callie has the map,” my mom went on. “I wouldn’t want you two to get lost on your first day of middle school.”

“We won’t,” I promised. “I’m meeting Callie at the corner of Ridge Street, and we’re walking to the bus stop together.”

“Uh, yeah,” I said, and quickly gulped down some orange juice. I hadn’t actually talked to her. But we’d been bus buddies ever since kindergarten (my corny mom came up with “bus buddies,” in case you didn’t figure that out already), so there was no real reason to believe this year would be any different. I knew I’d see her at the bus stop.

Every August, Callie goes to sleepaway camp, which totally stinks. She doesn’t get back until a few days before school starts. Normally I see her the first day she comes back and we go to King Cone for ice cream.

But this year Callie texted that she was busy shopping with her mom. Callie has always cared a lot more about clothes than I do. She wanted to find the perfect outfit to wear on her first day of middle school. And since we only had a few days before school started I didn’t think it was that weird that I didn’t see her. It was a little weird that she hadn’t called me back. But we had texted and agreed to meet on the corner of Ridge Street, so I was sure everything was fine.

I ate my last bite of pancake and stood up. “Gotta brush my teeth,” I said. When you’re the daughter of a dentist, you get into that habit pretty early.

Soon I was slipping on my backpack and heading for the door. Of course, Mom grabbed me and gave me a big hug.

“I packed you a special lunch, Cupcake,” she said.

Mom has called me Cupcake ever since I can remember. I kind of like it—except when she says it in front of other people.

“A special lunch? Really?” I teased her. Every lunch she makes me is a special lunch. “What a surprise.”

“I love you!” Mom called. I turned and waved. For a second I thought she was going to follow me to the bus so I yelled, “I love you too!” and ran down the driveway.

Outside, it still felt like summer. I should have worn shorts, I thought. There’s nothing worse than sitting in a hot classroom sweating a lot and having your jeans stick to your legs. Gross. But it was too late to change now.

Ridge Street was only two blocks away. There were lots of kids heading for the bus stop, but I didn’t see Callie. I stood on the corner, tapping my foot.

“Come on, Callie,” I muttered. If we missed the bus, Mom would insist on walking me to the bus stop every morning. I didn’t know if I could take that much cheerfulness before seven thirty a.m.

Then a group of girls turned the corner: Sydney Whitman, Maggie Rodriguez, and Brenda Kovacs—and Callie was with them! I was a little confused. Callie usually didn’t walk with them. It was always just Callie and me.

“Hey, Cal!” I called out.

Callie looked up at me and waved, but continued talking to Maggie.

That was strange. I noticed, though, she wasn’t wearing her glasses. She’s as blind as a bat without her glasses. Maybe she doesn’t recognize me, I reasoned. My hair did get longer this summer.

So I ran up to them. That’s when I noticed they were all dressed kind of alike—even Callie. They were wearing skinny jeans and each girl had on a different color T-shirt and a thick belt.

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AMAZING

I am 11 and pretty close to middlle school but not quite yet pretty close though. I am a bookworm and a future writer so i pretty much read alot of books and this book was amazing. It helped me alot and I am very happy that I read this book.

28 out of 33 people found this review helpful.

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Anonymous

Posted February 27, 2012

Read It!!!!

Okay. For all you questioners out there, ignore the one bad review that said "Wondering." Seriously people, why comment if you aren't helping others decide wheather or not to buy the book? Anyways, this book is amazing. I recommend it to 9+ year old (girls!). Its cute and light, and as sweet as the cupcakes inside of it. Basically, its about a girl named Katie, who is best friends with a girl named Callie. Once Callie starts hanging out with the popular girls (and domnt take this the wrong way, the popular girls arent bullies or anything!) Katie is forced to make new friends. She meets Alexis, the smart one, Mia, the fashionista, and Emma, who is super sweet and has tons of brothers. Katies mom packs a cupcake in her lunch, and it sparks an idea in the girls head. They decide to start a buisness- making cupcakes!There are more books, too. I seriously think you should get this book. It even gives you some delicious recipes in the back!BaconLover13

23 out of 29 people found this review helpful.

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Anonymous

Posted October 18, 2011

Awesome!!!!!!!!!

I absolutely loved it! I love books abour girls my age and what they go through. This is it!!!!!!!!!!!

21 out of 24 people found this review helpful.

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FiveEagles

Posted July 8, 2012

I love baking cupcakes as much as eating them, and I love readin

I love baking cupcakes as much as eating them, and I love reading just as much as I love finding good books to read. But when you mix cupcakes and drama&mdash;how can you beat that? Especially middle school drama. Middle school can be very exciting, and I know&mdash;everyone goes through it. And Katie Brown goes through an experience that most middle school girls will go through, and if not in middle school, in high school. Take it from me&hellip;it&rsquo;ll happen sometime. But when you look back, maybe that friend you were so-desperately trying to save wasn&rsquo;t meant to be your BFF. And trust me, if you&rsquo;re going through a time of friend-loss, or missing a friend that ditched you, or a time when one of your closest friends was spending way too much time with another girl, perhaps even a mean girl&mdash;you&rsquo;ll find some new friends to get you through it! Believe it or not, the exact same thing happened to me back a while ago in sixth grade. So after I read Katie and the Cupcake Cure, I felt hopeful that maybe my Mia, Alexis, and Emma would come along. And they did. And they turned out to be better friends than my old BFF ever was, sort of like how Callie isn&rsquo;t even comparable to the Cupcake Club anymore in Katie&rsquo;s eyes.

You see, I don&rsquo;t want to give the entire book away, but I know there&rsquo;s always a Sydney Whitman around that might be looking to pluck one of your friends from you. She also may run into you at the mall, and in your favorite stores&mdash;where you&rsquo;d want to see her least. It&rsquo;s all real-life stuff&hellip;and that&rsquo;s why the Cupcake Diaries series are so easy to read and easy to relate to. I can almost guarantee when you read this book as a fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth, or even ninth grader that you&rsquo;ll be able to relate to a part of the story&mdash;any of them! The series seems to keep on going, which is great for girls with a passion for reading.

If you have a sweet tooth, or you&rsquo;re a young tween bookworm, I recommend you pick this book up to read at your local bookstore, and give it a read! It&rsquo;s likely to help you stay hopeful that true friends will show up when you need them to&mdash;and show all young girls that no matter if you are afraid of middle school or not, you&rsquo;ll always be able to conquer it and make your middle school years SWEET!

Hopefully this review was helpful to you&mdash;please rate it if it was helpful&mdash;and I recommend the rest of the series for you to look into. Enjoy your reading journey and look for more of my reviews on young tween/teen books under my Pen Name!

17 out of 22 people found this review helpful.

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Anonymous

Posted March 3, 2012

Great book

This is a great book love it soooooi much just buy it great for all ages

BUY THIS BOOK

15 out of 21 people found this review helpful.

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Anonymous

Posted December 26, 2011

Omg

I love this book! I cant stop

12 out of 18 people found this review helpful.

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Anonymous

Posted December 13, 2011

Best Book Ever!

This is the best book ever! I love the whole entire series! You should read every single book in this series! There are always a lot of new books coming out in this series! It rocks!

12 out of 14 people found this review helpful.

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Anonymous

Posted November 8, 2011

Best book ever!!!!!!!

So good 4 all ages

12 out of 18 people found this review helpful.

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Anonymous

Posted December 30, 2011

Read the sample great 5 stars

It was awesome gotta buy the full book.

11 out of 15 people found this review helpful.

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I read this book and i Loved it with a capitol LOVE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!***

11 out of 18 people found this review helpful.

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Anonymous

Posted November 23, 2011

Read this as soon as possible

Tthis is the best book everr!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

8 out of 14 people found this review helpful.

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Anonymous

Posted June 12, 2012

Cupcake perfect

This book was great for ages 8 and a half to 12 and a half and tjis is a short book but even tho it is short it is one of the best books i've ever read

6 out of 10 people found this review helpful.

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2483610

Posted July 11, 2011

So cute

I love the book. I told my mom that I have to buy the next book. I hope Coco writes one about Emma and Alexis that are characterss in the book. I gave this book a four star. I am going to buy the book about Mia on my nook. I just the that book

6 out of 11 people found this review helpful.

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Anonymous

Posted January 12, 2013

Love it

I an ten years old and in fith grade and i Love this book sooo much!!!!!!!!!!! U should read the series thats whst i ganna do

5 out of 6 people found this review helpful.

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Anonymous

Posted August 23, 2012

Andryna

Love the book great read!

5 out of 6 people found this review helpful.

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warriorcatcupcakegirl

Posted June 6, 2012

Great book!!! after reading the book for the first time i nearl

Great book!!! after reading the book for the first time i nearly fliped to the biggining to read it again. Great for anyone with a love of cupcakes and reading! This is especially good for girls about to enter middle school for the first time, but good for other ages too! Had me reading up late to see what would happen next! Had me wanting to make cupcakes of my own after reading. I wish i had friends like the ones in the book and it had me wanting to start my own cupcake club. This book is as sweet as the cupcakes themselves and the other books in the series are just as good. I recomend buying the book and all the others in the series!

4 out of 5 people found this review helpful.

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Anonymous

Posted July 15, 2013

LOVE IT

This book was awseome! You should read this book! I think thaat it has good quality and is'nt listy. LOVE IT

3 out of 4 people found this review helpful.

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Anonymous

Posted April 25, 2013

Awsome books

You should realy read this book.

3 out of 4 people found this review helpful.

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Anonymous

Posted April 24, 2013

Cool girl

I really love this book!!! I started reading it one day and i couldnt put it down!! Read this book!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! :)

3 out of 4 people found this review helpful.

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Anonymous

Posted April 2, 2013

Anonamous

I LOVE THIS BOOK! It is so awesome (like me)! I read it while I was eating breakfeast and could barely put it down! This is a must read book! READ IT!!

3 out of 4 people found this review helpful.

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